


Songbird

by LuthienLuinwe



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Dick Grayson Is a Stripper, Drabbles, Drug Addiction, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, writing challenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-02 13:39:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15797664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienLuinwe/pseuds/LuthienLuinwe
Summary: A series of DC drabbles based on the "write for a duration of a song," challenge.





	1. ET

**Author's Note:**

> After some consideration, I have decided to publish the drabbles I have made from this writing exercise.
> 
> The rules of the challenge were as follows:
> 
> 1\. Place playlist / music listening device on shuffle  
> 2\. Title the drabble the same title as the song  
> 3\. The fic must be based on the song  
> 4\. Write only for the duration of the song
> 
> I hope you all enjoy!

**E.T. - Katy Perry**

**Boy, you’re an alien. Your touch so foreign. It’s supernatural. Extraterrestrial.**

Dick Grayson was something otherworldly. Had to be. Nothing else could explain the things he did to Jason, how he made him react. It was electric. Alien. He never knew he could feel that good, that someone else could make him feel that good.

Because Dick knew exactly what to do and when to do it. It wasn’t fair, how he always seemed to know just what to do, and Jason had no clue. It was something supernatural. Had to be. 

Jason would have killed to have those experiences for the rest of his life. It would be well worth it. He’d kill anyone for Dick, even though he would have disapproved.

Because with a body like that and a heart of gold… Well, a guy like Jason certainly didn’t deserve him. Never would.

But for the time being, Jason had him.

He had him, and he wasn’t letting go. Not ever, if he had any say in it.

God he hoped he could keep that forever.


	2. All We Know

**All We Know - Paramore**

**‘Cause all we know is falling and falls.**

Jason was an enigma, impossible to crack. No matter what happened, Dick would never understand his reasoning or why he handled things the way he did. Jason had had everything. And he’d thrown it out in their faces. 

Why?

Because Bruce hadn’t broken his one rule.

Sometimes Dick thought things would have been so much simpler if Bruce had broken his morals once. It wasn’t like it was some stranger: a dealer or a pimp. No, it was a madman responsible for countless deaths.

And now?

Everything they knew was falling apart around them, and they were helpless to stop it.

How were they supposed to fight someone they trained? Someone that knew them like the back of his hand?

He’d taken the whole damned city under siege, brought Gotham to her knees. 

And he didn’t even seem to care.

“You never said this wasn’t what you wanted,” Dick had argued with Jason before he’d disappeared. It had been a nasty fight full of things both regretted but neither would admit to regretting.

He’d go back and admit it. A thousand times over if that’s what it took to get Jason back to them, back safe and happy and  _ sane. _

But for now, Gotham was falling.

And all he could do was stand by and watch.


	3. For Your Entertainment

**For Your Entertainment - Adam Lambert**

**So hot, out the box, can we pick up the pace?**

It was a quiet night at the club. Tuesdays usually were. Dick sat in the back, jacket on over what little he was wearing. Public safety officer costumes that night. Usually drove the ladies wild. More importantly, drove a regular gentleman wild.

He pulled the costume on and headed out onto stage, letting the music take over his mind. He surveyed the crowd, looking for that face that had been glued to him for months now. Maybe now he’d finally get the nerve to talk to him.

_ Law says you can look, but you can’t touch. _

Screw the law.

He grinned when he heard the women scream when he pulled his shirt off, tossing it to the side like it was nothing. And really, with that cheap of a material, it may as well have been nothing.

He owned that stage and played the crowd like a fiddle. It was so damn easy, getting people to scream his name.

And when he saw that smirk on that fine gentleman’s face, he knew he was making all the right moves at all the right times.

“Nice moves, Officer,” the man had said on his way out.

And that smile stayed for weeks.


	4. Novocaine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for suicidal thoughts.

**Novocaine - Fall Out Boy**

**If you knew, knew what the blue bird sang at you, you would never sing along.**

It was so fucking pointless. Everything. Nothing. Did it even fucking matter anymore? He took a long drag from his cigarette and tried to calm his shaking hands. No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, he always screwed everything up. 

“You’re not a bad guy,” Dick had told him once.

Bullshit.

If Dick knew how bad Jason really was, he’d never speak to Jason again, would never be able to look at him again.

Would lock him up in Arkham again.

Hatred was easy. Anger was easy.

It was the numb feeling that had followed him since he came back that terrified him.

He was a problem that didn’t want to be solved. Why could no one understand that? Why couldn’t Dick take his Messiah complex and force it on some other project? Jason wasn’t worth it. There were others that would have been a hell of a lot better for a target.

If Nightwing knew the true monster his Little Wing had become…

He tossed the butt of the cigarette down onto the ground and stomped it out with his feet before lighting another one and taking another long drag.

Bullet to the head.

It would be easy enough. He’d done it to enough other people.

No. Couldn’t think like that.

Someone had to keep the Big Bads in check.

God knew Batman wouldn’t do shit, at least not where it mattered.

So he kept going, and he’d keep going.

Someone had to have the balls to do it, after all.


	5. The Walker

**The Walker - Fitz and the Tantrums**

**“I walk to the sound of my own drum.”**

Jason Todd gave zero fucks what people thought about him. Why should he? He was his own man. No longer that dewy-eyed kid who was determined to make Bruce proud of him, to make Batman proud of him… At least, he assumed he was no longer that person… Right?

He did what he want whenever he damn well felt like it. Rough up some low-life dealers in the middle of the night? Sure thing. Sounds good. No problem. And if someone got hurt along the way, well… There was no fun without a little bloodshed, right?

Batman had given him rules and parameters, but he didn’t answer to the big, bad Bat anymore, now did he? Bruce had made that perfectly clear during their latest less-than-civil meeting.

Fuck Batman.

Jason wasn’t going to play by anyone’s rules but his anymore. Why should he? What good had come from it before? None that he could think of. It was time to move on. It was time to leave Robin behind, dead in the ground where he belonged. No more Bat. No more Bruce. No more so-called “family” that had turned their backs on him the second they had an excuse to.

He was done.

Time to just be him, damn what the rest of the others thought. When had they ever really mattered to him anyway?

Well, maybe once-upon-a-time he’d held a soft spot for him. But it was time to leave them all behind.

Kill the boy and let the man rise.


	6. Alone Together

**Alone Together - Fall Out Boy**

**“I don’t know where you’re going, but do you got room for one more troubled soul?”**

There were fewer shitty places to meet a hookup than at an NA meeting, Roy couldn’t help but think. Granted, in his defense, he didn’t meet the guy at an NA meeting. The guy was at the N-anon meeting down the hall… Weren’t they a perfect match? A junkie and a junkie’s friend or spouse or whatever the hell he was.

“What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?” he’d asked the guy he’d bummed a cigarette off of.

“Mom’s an addict,” the kid shrugged. Kid, hell, he was probably only a few years younger than Roy. Still, only someone freshly an adult would have that stupid white streak in his hair. “What’s your excuse?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” Roy responded. “Daddy issues, baby mama issues, you name it.”

“You always try to turn people on by mentioning a kid?”

“Hell no.”

“Wanna get out of here?”

“Your place or mine?”

They’d ended up at Roy’s shitty apartment. The sex hadn’t been good, but it hadn’t exactly been bad either. But what the hell had he expected picking the guy, Jason, up where he’d gotten him? It wouldn’t last.

But at least for half an hour they had someone else, alone together, surrounded by a city of strangers.


	7. Roots

**Roots - In This Moment**

**“I bite down a little harder. My blade’s a little sharper. My roots, my roots run deep into the hollow.”**

Really, Dick should have thanked Blockbuster for teaching him a thing or two about life. Couldn’t trust anyone, couldn’t get close to anyone. All that would happen was disaster and the people closest to him getting hurt.  _ Hell, even the strangers you meet in the streets.  _ Secret identities existed for a reason. He’d be damned before he forgot that again.

Where had he slipped up? He didn’t remember. But looking out the window made him sick to his stomach and the thought of leaving his apartment made his palms sweat and his heart race. People were dropping like flies around him, and it was all his fault. And for what? Had he forgotten someone?  _ You won’t be able to shake someone’s hand without marking them for death. _

He was poison. 

He was bringing down everyone around him, and he couldn’t stop it, and he couldn’t ask for help without looking weak. The last thing he needed was Bruce to come flying to the rescue. He could handle it. He could handle it… 

God he couldn’t handle it.

What the hell was he supposed to do? He couldn’t so much as glance at someone without wondering when they’d show up on the six o’clock news. Because wouldn’t they show up on the news? Their body found cold and mutilated in God only knew what kind of horrific ways.

But who could he turn to? 

No one that he could think of.

He’d have to handle it. What choice did he have? That man, that monster of a man, couldn’t be permitted to keep wreaking havoc in his city. He wouldn’t allow it. He couldn’t allow it.

Roland Desmond had to go.

There was no other option.

Was there?

Bang.

It echoed through his head.

It always would.

 


	8. It Only Hurts

**It Only Hurts - Default**

**“It only hurts when my eyes are open.”**

Grayson was dead. 

Grayson was dead and he wasn’t coming back, and for what?

Damian wished he could have stayed dead too. 

But he’d come back.

And for what?

Grayson was dead.

It wasn’t fair. Everyone loved Grayson. He brought happiness and light into every room he entered. People  _ liked  _ him. Genuinely liked him, not the pretend fake ways Father’s friends acted like they liked Damian.

Grayson was dead.

The world was somehow darker knowing that.

There was a Grayson-shaped hole in the world that would never be filled, and Damian felt an emptiness crushing him, threatening to consume him, to  eat him alive. Why shouldn’t it? Grayson deserved to live. Damian didn’t…

Pennyworth told him he couldn’t think like that. What did Pennyworth know anyway? 

Grayson was dead.

Grayson, the only person who saw that he could be  _ good  _ (and he tried, he tried so damned hard to be good and to make everyone proud of him, to prove that he wasn’t the monster they all believed him to be… Sometimes he wished he were that monster, maybe things would be easier that way).

Grayson was dead.

Grayson was dead and nothing was ever going to be the same because the one person that gave a fuck about him was gone.

Grayson was dead.

And he wasn’t coming back.


	9. Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

**Good Riddance (Time Of Your LIfe) - Green Day**

**“So take the photographs and still-frames in your mind. Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time.”**

The first person to break Dick’s heart had been none other than Barbara Gordon. She was cute, in the girl-next-door sort of way, and he had been stupid enough to fall head over heels in love with her. And even then, knowing how it would end, he would do it again and again and again.

Falling in love was easy. And he would have killed to hold onto that light-hearted floaty feeling for the rest of his life.

But love went cold, as it was wont to do. And he had carried on, and life had gone on, and he tried not to be bitter about it, but it was so damn hard sometimes.

Still, he would have done it a thousand times over for her.

She was worth the heartache. She was worth the pain.

She made sure he knew he was worth loving and that he could fall in love again.


	10. Mine

**Mine - Taylor Swift**

**“I fell in love with a careless man’s careful daughter. She is the best thing that’s ever been mine.”**

Dick Grayson wanted to make sure Jason Todd felt loved or the rest of his life. But Jason was scared. Always had been, if Dick had anything to go by. Why shouldn’t he be? Dick had heard the stories of the mess that was the marriage between Catherine and Willis Todd.

And Dick had promised never to be like them. He would never hurt Jason/ He’d die before he hurt Jason. He would have killed to keep Jason happy and smiling for the rest of their lives, well, for the rest of Jason’s second life.

They fit together beautifully. They knew each others routines and secrets and everything there was to know. 

Being around Jason was easy. Dick could tell him anything and everything there was to tell, from the light and happy to the dark and deep.

And their fights had been brutal. Worse than brutal. They knew where to hit so it hurt, and God, did it hurt.

But they always made up.

They were always able to keep each other happy again, to bring that light back into their fucked up lives. 

Jason made life worth living for Dick.

Dick hoped that he made life worth living for Jason.

He never wanted to leave Jason. Not if his life depended on it.

Jason was the best thing that had ever been his.


End file.
